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About X-Lab

X-Lab anticipates the disruptions and potentially dystopian outcomes of different policy options and aims to help humanity change course through bold policy interventions, privacy-conscious technology development, and novel business models. X-Lab is future-focused: combining visionary leadership, risk tolerance, and technological acumen to influence legislative and regulatory debates and the creation of new technologies. X-Lab works to ensure that the tinkerers and digital craftswomen of tomorrow are free to develop human-centric, rights-preserving innovations.

X-Lab projects include looking at the implications for disruptive eventualities like the collapse of today’s traditional manufacturing chain caused by distributed manufacturing; the electromagnetic jaywalking that will become prevalent with software defined radios; the impacts of a new form of digital feudalism – an “Internet of Things” that lacks consumer protections; and, the need for transectoral interoperability to create truly “smart” infrastructure. X-Lab is an open sandbox that brings together technologists for specific projects and initiatives and is built to enable its projects to spin out quickly. X-Lab is an incubator that develops bold interventions that avoid the downside of technology from the get-go.

Mission

The lines are blurring between technology, law, and policy as more and more facets of our lives - the ways we live, work and communicate - become computer-mediated. Today, norms about how we interact with technology - and increasingly, how technology interacts with us - are being made by key decision-makers and will set the trajectory of society for decades to come. These decisions must be informed by a principled and ethical stance, not merely market forces and political expediency. Otherwise, these same decision-makers are in danger of rendering fundamental human rights obsolete through their actions and inactions. X-Lab combines the technological acumen of world experts across a variety of domains to analyze the implications of near-future technological breakthroughs and formulates positive intervention strategies for the coming tech-policy battles.